Photo Album
by oiwaistoid
Summary: Future one-shot that will possibly be turned into a longer piece.


Everyone has secrets under their bed.

Some people's secrets are simple – the crumbs of old food, an empty condom wrapper, or simply just a lot of mess that they refuse to believe exists.

Under the bed that we're looking at, there is only one thing: a photo album. The cover is brown leather, cracked at the edges, and the pages are thick and creamy, the kind that you could imagine existing in an antique bookshop that smelt of dust and mothballs.

If you opened up the album, you'd find that only three pages have been filled with photographs. Each one only has one photo on them, and each photo is of the same boy: slight yet muscular, with short brown hair and beautiful deep blue eyes. In one, he is wearing a uniform and frowning at the camera, obviously busy with work. In the next, he's sitting in a Starbucks wearing a simple white shirt, unaware that the photo is being taken. The last photo shows him in a long green kilt and a tux jacket, a crown held in his left hand, smiling happily against an azure sky. After those three photographs, the album is full of messy, pasted in newspaper and magazine clippings. Flicking through them, you would see that the newspaper clippings are all about someone's success. One headline proclaims _'HUMMEL'S FIRST BROADWAY PART IS A ROARING SUCCESS'_, a few pages on and you'd find one that says _'KURT HUMMEL GETS STARRING ROLE IN NEW MUSICAL'_. The clippings follow Kurt Hummel's star, tracking it as it reaches dizzying heights with no apparent signs of falling. Some of the clippings show Hummel's face, and there you might make a connection to the boy in the first few photographs. In the newspapers he is older, polished, surrounded by smiling faces and adoring crowds. But the eyes are still the same, the same deep blue, and he still smiles at the camera in the same way.

Blaine Anderson notices all of these things. When he opens the album to paste in a new clipping, or simply to stare at the too few photos he has of Kurt, Blaine notices. He sees the way that Kurt's eyes still crinkle at the corners when he's amused, he sees that Kurt's fashion sense has not changed, and neither has his need to take the current trends to new heights. Every time Blaine opens a magazine featuring Kurt, he wonders if Kurt will have changed, but in each article Blaine feels like he's reading a conversation with the Kurt he knew, the boy he loves, the boy who had loved Blaine back until he'd taken Kurt's heart and stamped over it in an attempt to protect his own.

Blaine knew, now, that he had never been as strong as Kurt. He'd never been able to face up to his fears, confront them and prove them wrong. He'd never been able to look his father in the eye and tell him that he was truly okay with who he was and who he loved. When his dad told him he was a loser and when the guys at school bullied him, Blaine had believed them and run away. When Kurt was bullied he'd faced Karofsky, changed his mind, and made him feel sorry. Kurt had walked out onto the stage and looked the sea of people who had condemned him straight in the eye. Blaine didn't feel like he'd looked anyone straight in the eye for years.

He had been holding Kurt back, stopping him from achieving his dreams. Even that night, Blaine had assumed Kurt would want to leave, because that's what he himself would do. He was inundated with self-doubts and fears, and he knew that he'd forever be chaining Kurt to the ground, when all he ever wanted was for Kurt to soar, to be that bright star tracked in the sky.

So Blaine had ended it. He had released Kurt from his Lima prison, from all of his own problems.

Now Kurt was a star, and Blaine knew that soon enough Kurt would ascend so high that he wouldn't be able to continue capturing Kurt's success between the pages of his album. But he'd do his best, because he had to remind himself that he'd done the right thing by letting Kurt go. He'd done the right thing for Kurt, even if it had left him alone, with only three photos and countless newspaper clippings for company.


End file.
